One of Morgan’s dances with history is difficult to credit. An episode concerning the bond between Elizabeth and her much livelier sister, Margaret (Lesley Manville), recreates the night in 1945 when they mingled incognito with the crowds celebrating V-E Day in London. Morgan pushes the point a little too hard when the evening culminates in having the young Elizabeth (Viola Prettejohn) jitterbug with an American soldier.
He is always on safe ground, though, when he sticks to the intensity of the relationships among the royals and their various levels of devotion to the jobs they’ve been stuck with. And as the story winds down, there are scenes whose fusion of intelligence and emotion reaches the high bar Morgan has set for himself. When Philip explains his grandson William’s anger to his son Charles, Pryce gets across the tangled mix of impatience and regret. Staunton makes us feel the pulsating anger of Elizabeth as she sits through a lecture about the royal family’s failings from her prime minister, Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel).
Staunton has been fine as the queen, but she hasn’t, as her two seasons progressed, given the character the same magisterial force that Olivia Colman and Claire Foy brought to the younger Elizabeths. Some of that is her softer presence (she’s a fine comedian, a quality that the role doesn’t often play up), and some of that has been a lack of screen time, as the story stayed closer to Diana, Charles and William.
If her Elizabeth has seemed a little fuzzy, though, the responsibility lies with Morgan. His conception of the queen as a captive to duty and tradition — someone who can be herself only if she leaves her post — puts the character in a straitjacket. And given that Elizabeth does not step down, despite indications that she thought about it, it leaves him struggling to find a dramatically satisfying ending.
Morgan acknowledges his own dilemma when — spoiler alert! — he brings back Foy and Colman, who argue with Staunton in a dramatization of Elizabeth’s uncertainties when Charles marries Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) in 2005. Foy distills what she, Colman, Staunton and Morgan have been showing us for six seasons: Elizabeth had to do it because only she could do it; no one else was up to the job. (Though eventually William might have what it takes.) With that, Staunton’s Elizabeth walks off into the light, even though she has another 17 years to live. When you realize you’ve saved the monarchy, and won a boatload of Emmys in the bargain, there’s no need to hang around.
